There was a mad scramble on Friday afternoon for a venue as heavy rain had deemed all council pitches unplayable so we eventually managed to get on at Oakwood School and were greeted with a strong gale. This was always going to be a tight affair between arguably the best two sides in the league and the scrappy start to the game reflected that. It was a half of very few chances, with Sharky having barely anything to do whilst at the other end we were not as potent as we normally are. However, with one of the few chances we did create we scored. A Jammer corner was headed back across goal by Gilby and there was Burnsy to tap in.
To the on-looker it may seem that we are a bit of one man team with Burnsy scoring over 30 goals for us but in truth that is not really the case. He has had a lot of good service this season and behind him are a set of players who all know their job and have done it superbly well this season. However, we do rely on his goals and it’s testament to him as a striker how many of his goals have been tap ins this season.
We got to the half time break with our lead in tact and felt confident we could keep QPR out. Our case was helped soon on when two of their players got a ticking off for fighting amongst themselves. Once again we defended well with QPR only threatening the goal once, when Jebu had to head off the line and if anyone was going to score it would have been us as JV had a shot cleared off the line and Jammer missed his kick when through on goal. We survived a late bout of pressure to hold on to a win that will go along way to seeing us win the league.
As you can see from the table below, we are in prime position for the title. Our victories over Hearts and QPR have more or less ruled them out and if we come out of our two games in hand over Bury still unbeaten then we will have to drop points in at least two games and if you consider our record so far, they may as well start engraving our name on the trophy!
Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | PTS |
Preston North End | 19 | 9 | 7 | 3 | 63 | 35 | 28 | 44 |
16 | 13 | 1 | 2 | 89 | 23 | 66 | 43 | |
Rotherham | 14 | 13 | 1 | 0 | 67 | 12 | 55 | 41 |
Hearts | 15 | 10 | 2 | 3 | 59 | 34 | 25 | 37 |
14 | 10 | 1 | 3 | 56 | 11 | 45 | 35 | |
14 | 10 | 1 | 3 | 62 | 23 | 39 | 35 |